Testimonial letter from Mike Nichols
This letter is one of a remarkable series of over 2650 letters amassed in 1983 to support Osho's attempt to get permanent resident status in the US at the time of the Oregon ranch. The image is reproduced here with the kind permission of The Oregon Historical Society. Information about their collection of these letters and other supporting material -- the "Jeffrey Noles Rajneesh Collection", named for Osho's immigration lawyer Jeffrey Noles, who compiled them in 1983 and donated them to the OHS -- can be found at this page. The wiki is grateful to the OHS for making access available for these documents. For more information and links to all the letters, see Testimonial letters.
This letter is from Mike Nichols. It is "Exhibit A-1879" in the Noles collection.
The text version below has been created by optical character recognition (OCR), from the images supplied by OHS. It has not been checked for errors but this process usually results in over 99% correct transcription. Most apparent "errors" are correct transcriptions of typos already in the original. The image on the right in the text box links to a pdf file of the original letter, it has one page.
 NB: Not the famous film and Broadway director Mike Nichols July 15 1983 To whom it may concern: It has come to my attention that a fundamentalist religious element has begun a campaign to have Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh removed from the country. What harm, what crime has the man committed aside from thinking differently than those who would oust him? His teachings seem no different from those of other moral and philosophical teachers in the world past and present. It would appear that he has been marked for persecution simply because he is not American born and because he takes a different perspective than the narrow minded hate mongers who would have his hide. What of our foreign born college professors, artists, and business persons? Should they all be thrown into the sea because they are different, because they do not adhere to a fundamentalist point of view which, since its resurgence over the past few years, has set America back a good thirty years? I think not. Hate and ignorance and fear are the greatest enemies of a free society. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh represents none of these things. After two hundred years isn’t it time we truly guaranteed a man’s right to his beliefs? Sincerely, |
(Please note: We assume that the above letter is still copyrighted, but we regard its historical interest to constitute a Fair Use exception for publication in this wiki.)
